Soft Skills Development Management Model: From Young People to Professionals

Abstract

In recent years, higher education establishments and training schools around the world have begun to offer soft skills training or education programs to help young people and professionals integrate into the labor market and to achieve superior performance . Hard skills, such as functional skills and knowledge, are extremely important for performing professional tasks. However, personal and social skills make a difference between the simple "good job" and the achievement of superior performance in individuals and teams.
In light of the above, the objectives of this study and communication of its results are the following: validate and present a management model for the development of soft skills (Rouco, 2012) adopted by the National Young Entrepreneur Association, proficiency of personal and social core competencies to perform better in any situation or at different hierarchical levels of the workplace; identify the most important social and personal core competencies for young people or professionals to perform better in any situation or in the workplace; and finally, to verify the existence of GAPS of the degree of proficiency of the personal and social nuclear competences between the novices and the professionals of the different hierarchical levels of a profession or category.
For the materialization of the study the quantitative method is used, through the application of the Soft Skills Questionnaire (Rouco, 2012), with 27 skills and 81 items. The population is the CadetsStudents of the Military Academy and Officers of the Permanent Table of the Portuguese Army until the category of Superior Officers.
Given that the data are being processed, it is still not possible to present the final conclusions, however, it is verified that there are more personal and social competences to obtain superior performances in the different situations and hierarchical levels, and there are still differences in the degree of proficiency of the competences under study in the different hierarchical levels.